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Book Review: The Punch Escrowhttps://jonathanrgross.com/2018/12/13/book-review-the-punch-escrow/
https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/12/13/book-review-the-punch-escrow/#respondFri, 14 Dec 2018 01:30:20 +0000http://jonathanrgross.com/?p=2010More]]>Just wrote this while updating the status of this book on my Goodreads.com profile, and I figured I can always use more blog content.

Honestly my expectations were a bit too high and this fell short.

The standard I’m holding this to is ‘Nexus’ by Ramez Naam. Both feature a character forced into danger because of their relationship with a technology that undermines our concept of what it means to be human. But unlike ‘Nexus’ this didn’t explore its premise nearly as much as I hoped, and spent way too much time with some pretty standard fight and chase scenes. I was also very disappointed with the worldbuilding. The author clearly invested a lot of energy explaining the fictional physics that explain the in world technology, but the actual culture and lifestyles of 2147 felt unoriginal and uninteresting. The conceit of the protagonist being a social engineering hacker was a lot lamer than I was expecting- it mostly manifested as him effortlessly getting through locked doors by lying to a conversational AIs, because evidently 130 years from now all security systems have been replaced with really gullible robots.

Another problem with the world building- this book features the trope of a character in the future who makes pop culture references that are contemporary for the reader but over a century out of date for anyone in that world. I’m not trying to nitpick- References to Mr. T and Elon Musk and snarky t-shirts really take me out of the story, and it hurts the verisimilitude of the world that there’s been no new culture in the last 130 years. I suggest the trope be dubbed ‘Kleining’, because the only book that does it more than this one is ‘Ready Player One’.

]]>https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/12/13/book-review-the-punch-escrow/feed/0punchescrow_cjonathanrgrossThe Myth of the Millennialhttps://jonathanrgross.com/2018/11/29/the-myth-of-the-millennial/
https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/11/29/the-myth-of-the-millennial/#respondThu, 29 Nov 2018 19:42:21 +0000http://jonathanrgross.com/?p=1991More]]>A recent report by the St Louis Fed announced that the primary difference between millennials and previous generations is that millennials are poorer. This contradicts conventional wisdom that the cause of millennials being less successful is that the entire generation is incompetent.

If you’re unaware of some of the stereotypes about millennials, here’s a summary: It’s a well documented reality that those born between 1981 and 1997 (plus or minus a few years depending on your definition) are failing to reach the same metrics of success and maturity as previous generations did at the same point in their lives. Millennials buy homes less [1], get married less [2], have kids less [3], and live with their parents more [4]. A common assumption (among people who aren’t millennials) is that this is all consistent with this being a generation of screw ups who are lazy and incompetent. The thinking goes that millennials choose not to hit those milestones of maturity because they’re immature and don’t want to. This is pretty mind blowing, since the explanation that they want to do those things but can’t makes a lot more sense. Most of those things are objectively desirable. No one wants to live with their parents. People want to form lifelong partnerships. And owning a house provides stability and security.

To put into perspective how widely held these misconceptions about millennials are, go ahead and click on the sources I used above. All of them document the things millennials are forgoing, and then claim without evidence that millennials choose to skip that stuff because they’re lazy and immature. Take the article I linked above documenting how millennials don’t buy homes. It cites an expert who says, “In my generation, I’m a baby boomer, you bought a home as quickly as you could. You didn’t take a vacation for years to save for the down payment on your first home.” While that’s presented as the informed conclusion of a knowledgeable expert, its actually complete bullshit- millennials don’t spend their down payment on a vacation because they’re too poor and stressed out to take them [5]. And that quote is from economist Dr. Laurie Goodman, Vice President of Housing Finance Policy at the Urban Institute. With people that well respected unwittingly expressing biased, inaccurate opinions like they’re facts, its no wonder that the theory of the lazy millennial is so widespread.

But there has been a growing awareness of the reality of lower incomes driving these trends. While its probably too little too late to undo the damage that the myth of the lazy millennial has caused, its never too late to start trying to prevent things from getting worse (that’s a lesson millennials are very familiar with on account of climate change). Bloomberg’s coverage of this recent Fed report sums up the takeaway pretty succinctly in its opening lines:

“Millennials, long presumed to have less interest in the nonstop consumption of goods that underpins the American economy, might not be that different after all, a new study from the Federal Reserve says.

Their spending habits are a lot like the generations that came before them, they just have less money at this point in their lives, the Fed study found. The group born between 1981 and 1997 has fallen behind because many of them came of age during the financial crisis.”

Meanwhile, in December of last year the Wall Street Journal publicly acknowledged their habit of scapegoating millennials, and vowed that they would cover the group more accurately. While they deserve credit for owning up to the problem and making a change, they also deserve blame for years of promoting stereotypes that have deprived millennials of sympathy and likely stymied the awareness and political will to address financial hardships that affect millions of Americans. For one of countless examples of how condescending and dismissive their reporting was, check out this story about how companies are adding better support for their products because millennials are too incompetent to do many tasks that were trivial for previous generations:

“Lawn-mower engine maker Briggs & Stratton Corp. built a professional studio inside its Milwaukee office last year to make how-to videos. Power-tool maker Andreas Stihl AG calls these new consumers “Willie Wannabes,” compared to their elders, who are “Eddie Experts.”

To drive home the fact that this all traces back to a generation that suffered the consequences of mistakes that were made before they arrived, look at the timing of the word millennial catching on. While the term has existed in obscurity since it was coined in the late 1980’s, Google Trends indicates that interest in the term remained low until around 2012. If interest in the group began when the oldest millennials entered the world as adults (I’ll be conservative and use the age of 22 instead of 18), that would have happened sometime around 2004.

The fact that the popular notion of millennials didn’t really exist until a couple years after the financial crisis hit suggests that all the traits we associate with millennials are actually just the results of the financial hardship experienced by american’s entering the workforce during the great recession. Before the great recession our current concept of a millennial didn’t exist, because all the traits we associate with them only appeared after the recession.

]]>https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/11/29/the-myth-of-the-millennial/feed/0coverjonathanrgrossexpemillPhotos from LA Comic Conhttps://jonathanrgross.com/2018/11/13/photos-from-la-comic-con/
https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/11/13/photos-from-la-comic-con/#respondWed, 14 Nov 2018 01:45:27 +0000http://jonathanrgross.com/?p=1904More]]>In this post, I’m going to dump dozens of photos taken at LA Comic Con two weeks ago. First, some info on our costumes: My brother Andrew, his partner Tony, and I all went as Marvel superheroes. Andrew went as Captain America in an alternate costume based on a costume the character briefly wore after disavowing the identity of Captain America. The costume was later adopted by another character, US Agent. Andrew sewed the jacket himself. The shield is purchased, although Andrew customized it by repainting the back side a metallic gray. The shield was also autographed by Spider-man actor Tom Holland when Andrew met him at the premier of Avengers: Infinity War. The helmet was made using our new 3D printer.

Tony went as Squirrel Girl. The costume is largely made of purchased articles of clothing. Eyeshadow was used as a subtle nod to the weird eye makeup Squirrel Girl used to wear before her reinvention in a popular series by Ryan North and Erica Henderson in 2015. The belt pouches were filled with nuts to remain faithful to the spirit of the character. I went as Hawkeye, as he appears in Matt Fraction’s popular series. The costume is made of a shirt with a logo attached with fabric glue. I made the pouches of the utility belt and the side quiver by sewing them. The compound bow I used belongs to Tony, and was modified to prevent the bowstring from being drawn in order to comply with the convention weapons policy. Additionally to comply with the weapons policy, the arrows were all props made from wooden dowels and EVA foam. The costume also included fake hearing aids for both ears, since the character is almost entirely deaf.

Saturday

For the first day of the convention we walked around the convention center and only visited one panel. We also met up with a friend of ours. After the convention Tony and I changed into other costumes, and the three of us got drinks downtown.

Sunday

The second day of the convention was more of the same from Saturday- hanging out and checking out panels and booths. Below are some of the photos from that day.

]]>https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/11/13/photos-from-la-comic-con/feed/0comic conjonathanrgrossIMG_20181027_123820898I Now Have a 3D Printerhttps://jonathanrgross.com/2018/10/04/i-now-have-a-3d-printer/
https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/10/04/i-now-have-a-3d-printer/#respondThu, 04 Oct 2018 22:14:44 +0000http://jonathanrgross.com/?p=1899More]]>My brother and I recently bought a 3D printer. I’m really excited to finally have one, because I think I’m going to enjoy using it and because its going to come in handy for many of my projects. I’ve used 3D printing before at work and I’ve contracted prints through shapeways for personal projects, but owning one myself will really open up the possibilities for what I can make by lower. I’m reminded of one of the makers that I follow on YouTube, James Bruton, whose strong preference for 3D printing sometimes surprised me in the past. He uses 3D printing for flat parts that could have been made using a jigsaw or laser cutter. There’s nothing wrong with using 3D printing for these applications though- he doesn’t own a laser cutter and a jigsaw doesn’t allow for the fabrication process to be automated like a 3D printer does. Its funny that the saying “When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail” is typically a criticism, because it seems that it could be spun to have a positive meaning as well. If you find ways to turn your problems into nails, you’ll be amazed how much you can do with one hammer.

The printer is a Flying Bear P905. We chose it because it looks like a good value and has everything we were looking for- namely duel extruders and sufficiently large bed with a built in heater. We also wanted all lateral motion to be in the print heads instead of having the stage move side to side, since that uses space less conservatively.

We’ve assembled the printer and begun printing, but there are still plenty of small upgrades we’d like to make, including a camera for monitoring prints and a fan to cool the prints faster. In the meantime we have plenty of small parts to make while tinkering with the printer, starting with miniatures for our D&D sessions.

]]>https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/10/04/i-now-have-a-3d-printer/feed/0IMG_20180923_091921415cjonathanrgrossIMG_20180922_134942765Visiting Prague and Budapesthttps://jonathanrgross.com/2018/09/21/visiting-prague-and-budapest/
https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/09/21/visiting-prague-and-budapest/#respondFri, 21 Sep 2018 21:54:30 +0000http://jonathanrgross.com/?p=1758More]]>Here’s a belated photo dump from a trip to Europe- specifically the capitals of the Czech Republic and Hungary. Both were beautiful, historic places about which I knew virtually nothing, because I am an ignorant American. Fortunately I was accompanied by two friends, one of whom is an avid traveler and the other is an American expatriate living in Europe.

The trip to Prague

I flew to Prague with a single connection in Moscow. Despite all the hassles of air travel, I really like being on planes. I’ve never stopped being blown away by the fact you can get to the other side of the planet in a matter of hours by riding insider a metal tube that travels 80% of the speed of sound several miles above the ground. I also enjoy the ability to binge movies guilt free, because there’s nowhere else to go.

Sightseeing around Prague

After arriving I made my way to my airbnb rental, where I rendezvoused with the two friends that I was joining for the trip. After arriving I was hungry, so the three of us walked to a nearby restaurant. It began to rain hard as we walked there. The rain was an exotic experience for me. Anyone from LA can confirm that rain is rare, and downpours occur so infrequently that you can go years without being caught in one. We braved the rain and found a restaurant, where we had some fantastic Czech food and some unfiltered beer.

The next day we began the trip in earnest with a guided tour of the old town, which allowed us to get our bearings.

The Kafka Museum

The Kafka Museum was great, although weird. I’m not very familiar with his work. I read The Metamorphosis in high school and Investigations of a Dog in a gen ed class during my freshman year of college, but outside that assigned reading in my distant past I was totally unfamiliar with him. The museum was designed to chronicle his life in a way that drew on his style, and so the exhibits themselves were dark, moody, and confusing. Unfortunately photography was prohibited so I can’t show any photos, except for this photo of the old town taken from the window. I was into it both because the view was amazing, and because I thought whatever metaphor they were going for with the bright beautiful scene contained in a small frame and viewed from a depressing room was presumably deliberate, and probably clever, even if I didn’t totally get it.

I also bought a postcard and sent it to my brother and his husband. I felt pretty clever for parodying Kafka, even if I was being a total poser since as I already mentioned, I’m not that familiar with his work. I think the museum did a decent job of bringing me up to speed though.

Prague Castle

My friends were more experienced at visiting Europe, and sightseeing in general, and opted to visit a bunch of historic castles and churches. I had no objection to this. If you’ve seen my photos from travelling Japan, I defaulted to castles there too.

We also visited the Museum of Communism, which has a deliberately ambiguous name. Is it intended to teach you about communism from a perspective that’s sympathetic to Marx’s ideas, or an indictment of the brutal Communist regime of postwar Czechoslovakia? In retrospect it should have been obvious that it was the second one, but I wasn’t sure. Its a decent museum but misnamed, since I think a museum focusing on a single communist country with an emphasis on the crimes committed by that government is technically different than a museum about Communism itself.

This Park

More churches. This was in a park, the name of which I forget.

Travelling to Budapest

We took the train. It was great.

Sightseeing in Budapest

Like Prague, we kicked it off with a guided tour to get the lay of the land. I learned that Budapest is actually pronounced Budapesht, and that the city is named that because its actually the combination of a village called Buda on one side of the river, and Pest on the other. Sorry for sharing basic facts that you could get literally anywhere with information about Budapest, but this was all new to me.

The bathhouse

The city is famous for its bathhouses, which span from more traditional, to so modern its basically a pool party.

The Basilica

This place was beautiful, and had a great view from the dome.

More sightseeing

After the bathhouse, we got lunch at a big market, checked out the national gallery, and visited the Terror Museum, which chronicles Hungary’s role in the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the Hungarian secret police. It did not allow photography inside so I can’t show you photos, but I did not care for the museum. At the risk of sounding like an ugly american, the fact that the exhibits were exclusively in Hungarian made it hard to understand, even with the guided audio tour. Additionally, it was less of a history museum and more of an installation art museum themed with atrocities. The exhibits were pretty hard to understand, and rather than showing off specific artifacts or explaining what happened during that period, the rooms were highly stylized and totally indecipherable to me. My friend really liked it, probably on account of being knowledgeable about history and not needing the actual facts taught to her. If you are like me however, you will likely not get much out of this place.

]]>https://jonathanrgross.com/2018/09/21/visiting-prague-and-budapest/feed/0IMG_20180807_122124923jonathanrgrossInstructable: Laser Engraved Christmas Ornamenthttps://jonathanrgross.com/2017/01/15/instructable-laser-engraved-christmas-ornament/
https://jonathanrgross.com/2017/01/15/instructable-laser-engraved-christmas-ornament/#respondSun, 15 Jan 2017 16:30:34 +0000http://jonathanrgross.com/?p=1670More]]>In December I made custom Christmas ornaments as gifts for my roommates. It was a fun project, and afterward I posted a how-to guide on instructables.com. Here’s a link to it.

I just saw Rogue One on Friday, and I’ve been reflecting on it since. I liked it, but found it hard to decide on exactly how much. While new Star Wars movies are routinely judged against how good they are relative to other entries in the franchise (i.e. “Revenge of the Sith is the best of the prequels”, “The Force Awakens is better than Return of the Jedi”, ect), this method fell short when trying to assess Rogue One. After searching my feelings I realized the source of my ambivilence was that the best part of Rogue One isn’t on screen- Rogue One is great because it makes Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope better. After seeing this movie I’m convinced that Rogue One is now the logical starting point for someone wishing to watch the franchise start to finish.

This isn’t just because it chronologically takes place before A New Hope. The prequel trilogy takes place even earlier than Rogue One, but any debate on when to watch the prequels is centered on whether they should be watched between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as an overextended flashback, after the original trilogy in the order they were released, or not at all. It’s not just a matter of quality- the poor reception of the prequel trilogy notwithstanding, there’s also the problem that it’s also a seven hour long spoiler for one of the greatest twists in movie history. In this respect watching the prequels first doesn’t just fail to improve the experience of watching the originals, they actually make them worse.

And it’s not just issues with quality or spoilers- the prequels also fail as a starting point for franchise viewing because their attempts to outdo feats that won’t appear until later in the story are an indelibly imprint of the order in which the movies were made. Darth Vader is scary with one lightsaber? Darth Maul in Episode I has two (attached end to end). Darth Maul has two? General Grievous in Episode II has four. This isn’t just a case study in diminishing returns- even if these gimmicks had succeeded, they still create the problem that anyone watching the movies chronologically would now see the fight between Obi-Wan and Vader as a dramatic deescalation in the intensity of lightsaber combat. Rogue One on the other hand doesn’t face this problem because it refreshingly features absolutely no Jedi, and a near absence of any Force powers whatsoever. Not only is it an impressive display of faith in the Star Wars universe that the filmmakers believe a story can be carried entirely by the quality of its writing and not by the gimmick of an increasing lightsaber count, but perhaps better than any other aspect of the movie, Rogue One’s take on the Force (or lack thereof) exemplifies how the greatness of this movie is not in itself, but in how it elevates A New Hope. Imagine a new viewer of the Star Wars franchise spending hours in this universe with virtually no exposure to the Force. It puts them in the same place as Luke when we first meet him- having heard of the rebels, the republic, the empire, and a galaxy populated by droids and aliens, but with no knowledge of the Jedi or the Force beyond an awareness of it being an obscure and more or less dead religion. In A New Hope, Han Solo scoffs when he hears’s Obi-Wan talking about the Force. He’s just learned that the old man who hired him is a crazy religious fanatic, naively insisting that the unstoppable empire can be defeated through the power of prayer. The subsequent demonstrations of the Force are made cooler by initial disbelief- disbelief that is undermined in the prequel trilogy by the ubiquitous presence of famous Force users who constantly influence the course of history with incredible feats.

Speaking of Force users, what of Darth Vader? Watching Rogue One first means the first time he appears on screen is different than what was intended when Star Wars was created, but it’s actually an improvement. He appears only twice in Rogue One, preserving the mystery of the character, and teasing the audience with a brief display of his terrifying power. Rather than seeing him for the first time as he boards the ship at the beginning of A New Hope, the audience has already briefly seen him him in action, in what is now one of my go to examples of “show don’t tell”. The audience doesn’t need to be told he’s a badass because it was established wonderfully on screen. The same is true of the desperation of the rebellion. Especially due to the amount of sacrifice and loss at the end of Rogue One, the sense of the rebellion as a tragic lost cause is communicated better than a New Hope possibly could.

And the flow between Rogue One and A New Hope isn’t just established by the final scene of Rogue One transitioning seamlessly into the beginning of A New Hope. There’s also the fact that Rogue One turns the franchises’ biggest plot hole, the Death Star’s improbably convenient weakness, into a great plot point. And on top of that there’s the fact that Rogue One depicts the exact events always mentioned but never shown in the opening crawl that appears at the very beginning of A New Hope:

“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….”

The connection between the movies is so seamless that were it not for the more advanced visual effects in Rogue One, an ignorant viewer would likely believe that A New Hope was an outstanding sequel to a very good first entry. It’s very ironic that the first Star Wars movie not to be episode anything, a movie ostensibly intended as the first of many spin-off films removed from the main story established by the original trilogy, actually connects better than any of the prequels or the sequel. Rogue One is unmistakably Episode III in everything but name. It doesn’t top A New Hope, it transforms it, from being the first entry in a trilogy into an incredible second entry in tetralogy.

The magic of Fee and Dividend

Fee and Dividend works by imposing limits on carbon emitted by energy generation, and collecting a fee from companies that exceed it. The collected money is then redistributed among all citizens. In this way, emitting CO2 is discouraged, alternative energy sources are incentivized, citizens get a financial windfall, and the whole thing is revenue neutral. That’s a huge deal, because for the 97% of republicans who have signed a pledge never to raise taxes, any new revenue to the government is an absolute dealbreaker. It also pursues federal action on climate change with something that totally squares with laissez-faire economics. Personally I don’t care whether the solution to the climate crisis uses a free market solution or not, but the fact is that appealing to those who do can make the difference between our country taking action and doing nothing. While volunteering with the CCL, I’ve met climate skeptics who say that imposing a fee will raise the cost of making energy and that will gets passed to the consumer. I’ve also met people who are hardcore supporters of taking action on climate change who are wary of moderate solutions that don’t go far enough. One person I spoke with wanted to see the people who support fossil fuels get punished, like people who drive gas guzzlers, for example.

The beauty of any method that imposes a cost on carbon (including Fee and Divided), is that imposing a cost on the production of energy is just correcting for the fact that right now, fossil fuel energy is mispriced. There’s a cost to the cleanup for any environmental disaster, and right now carbon emitters get away with not paying it. By adding a cost to carbon production, that error is corrected. Yes, in the short term oil and natural gas will cost a little more than they used to. But that’s not because going forward they’ll cost more than they should- it’s because by forgetting to include the cost of fixing the environmental damage, the price of energy has been wrong all along. So to the person who thinks taking action will hurt the economy, we’re just fixing a problem we’ve overlooked since the industrial resolution. The temporary economic effects of weaning off hydrocarbons is nothing compared to the cost we’ll pay in the long term if we keep using them. And to the people who ask if gas guzzlers will be punished, no. The dividend they get with be the same as everyone else, and it will offset some of the increase in the cost of fuel. But for those who didn’t drive an SUV, there will be more dividend left over after they fill up their car. So it isn’t a punishment, just the accurate cost being reflected, and motivating everyone to look for energy that’s actually cheap, even when you include the environmental impact in the price.

What not to do

On October 30th National Geographic released the highly anticipated documentary, Before the Flood. As the effects of climate change continue to mount, action on this critical issue becomes more and more urgent. There was a time when that last sentence would have said that evidence was mounting, but tragically we’re way past that point. The evidence is unambiguous, and its the effects that are now drawing headlines. In light of this, a well made documentary to call attention to this problem would seem to be cause for hope. This is because right now, the obstacle that stops us from meeting this challenge isn’t a lack of options- its that we can’t take any legislative action to fight this problem without the political capital to do so. And that political capital can only come from an electorate that demands change.

Tragically, Before the Flood may do more harm than good. As the movie opens it begins following its producer and narrator, Leonardo DiCaprio. Cast here as a selfless hero, the opportunity for this documentary to change minds begins to disappear like a collapsing ice shelf. The reason that a shrinking but still massive fraction of american, 36%, don’t support action to fight climate change is because the issue has become politically polarized. The reality of climate change is accepted within the Democratic party. It is routinely dismissed among Republicans. I share the frustration and outrage of everyone who wants to avert this catastrophe, and watches helplessly as a massive institution uses its incredible resources to thwart an attempt to save us all. But when we demonize the people who don’t believe in climate change we just force them to retreat further into their own insular party, and make it harder for them to join the fight against climate change.

As well meaning as Leonardo DiCaprio is to lend his star power to a worthy cause, the presence of a famously progressive celebrity is the last thing that’s needed. Just as Al Gore unwittingly reminded conservatives where the battle lines were drawn when he made himself the face of the fight against climate change with An Inconvenient Truth, Before the Flood cripples its ability to reach the very people who need to see this most.

When we talk about fighting climate change, we should ask ourselves, which do we want more? To smugly bask in our own righteousness, while shaming those who are not so enlightened? Or to actually solve this problem, by showing respect for people who don’t agree with us, changing their minds, and enlisting their help to solve this problem? If your answer is the latter, you should be a member of the Citizens Climate Lobby.

]]>https://jonathanrgross.com/2016/11/15/one-crazy-trick-that-kills-climate-change-obstructionism/feed/0climate-cold-glacier-icebergjonathanrgrossA Love Letter to Rail Travelhttps://jonathanrgross.com/2016/10/14/a-tirade-about-trains/
https://jonathanrgross.com/2016/10/14/a-tirade-about-trains/#respondFri, 14 Oct 2016 17:09:56 +0000http://jackgross.wordpress.com/?p=732More]]>As I traveled around Japan for 10 days after finishing my EAPSI fellowship, I spent a lot of time on trains. By my count I logged about 2200 km by rail in the span of a couple days, and my lasting impression of Japan’s rail network is clear- I can’t praise it highly enough. I used the shinkensen bullet train a lot while travelling around, and it continued to reinforce the idea that trains are vastly underrated. As far as I can tell, there are only two drawbacks to trains relative to planes- first, you can’t change the route after you build the tracks, unlike planes that can go between any two locations as long as they both have a runway. Second, the bullet trains have a max speed of 285 km/h[1], which is obviously a lot slower than planes (around 700 mph). With respect the first drawback, all the most heavily trafficked plane routes have been continuously flown for decades, so its not like there’s a serious risk after you build rail lines between two major cities that you will later discover no one needs to travel between those places anymore. I’m looking at you, California. Seriously, it’t not exactly a daring prediction that people are going to keep needing to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco for the foreseeable future.

For the second drawback- the fact planes are much faster- that’s easily offset by all the other benefits trains have. I feel like I’m stating the obvious here, but considering that we don’t have enough popular support for rail travel in America to, you know, actually build train lines, maybe it isn’t obvious enough yet. The incredibly obvious observation I’d like to share is that aside from the time the plane is in the air, plane travel is incredibly slow. Airports are rarely in the middle of a city because they require tons of space and make lots of noise, which means you need to spend more time getting to and from airports than it takes to get to a well placed train station. There’s a ton of time spent on security checks too, but trains are less of a target for terrorism. While they can be bombed (a weakness shared by pretty much everything except for bodies of water), they can’t be hijacked and flown into things. Consequently, taking the train in Japan featured as much security checking as taking a subway, which is to say, none. Loading and unloading planes also takes a long time. This is a natural result of the fact that air travel has razor thin profit margins, requiring planes to be tightly packed, with typically one entrance on most aircraft. Meanwhile trains have two entrances per car. They’re also not loaded or unloaded completely at most stops, and its safe to stand near the doors while the train is arriving and departing.

On top of that, without the pressure of small profit margins, trains can make a greater number of trips per day, and don’t need to be filled to capacity. So while passengers on planes must arrive 90 minutes early to protect against the nightmare of missing a flight, with trains the consequences are much less dire. This means less cushion time, which reduces travel time relative to flight even further.

Japan has a train inspired by the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. It’s basically the train equivalent of cosplay.

When I was at Georgia Tech, the project I worked on was part of a large NASA program to address long term goals for passenger transport aircraft. The whole thing was motivated by the fact that air travel is predicted to not just stick around, but to keep growing over the coming decades. That means the cost associated with travelling, the inconvenience, and the substantial carbon footprint are just going to get worse. Interesting, it was found that in order to reach goals for emissions reductions, there was no way around the fact that planes will have to fly slower, since the faster you fly, the less efficient you are. This reduction in speed was expected to be offset in time savings everywhere else. But all of those problems I listed are direct results of things that are inherent to air travel, and they can’t be fixed easily. Airlines aren’t trying to make everyone miserable- if fixing those problems was easy they would have done it by now. How do they plan to address the fact that you can’t move airports to more convenient locations? How can you make boarding faster when after 100 years of optimizing we can only reduce the cost of flying so much, necessitating that planes be tightly packed and fully booked? I think it’s mind blowing that it’s possible to achieve these goals with current technology- plenty of other nations already have.

And this doesn’t even mention aviation’s carbon footprint. While battery technology is improving rapidly, development is focused on reducing costs to be competitive with fossil fuel engines. No one has high hopes that we can do anything about the fact that hydrocarbons have fantastic energy density. While a lower energy density isn’t a problem for cars, with planes it’s a dealbreaker. They need to save every pound they can, and carrying batteries that weigh more than fuel does, and which do not get lighter throughout the flight (like a fuel tank does) means that planes will continue to depend on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. We can reduce drag with better aerodynamics, reduce weight with composites, reduce fuel burn with slower cruising speeds, and increase engine efficiency with higher bypass ratios, but those can only do so much. Not only is aviation’s fraction of our total carbon footprint expected to go up because of more air travel, its also going to go up because electric vehicles are expected to make the rest of the transportation industry go down.

So considering that a sober assessment of the future of air travel already begins with an acknowledgement that planes will have to fly slower, and that there’s no way that planes can be powered by batteries, why can’t we as a society recognize that there’s a form of ground transport that’s already able to replace a lot of our aviation industry, if we would only invest in it? I’m not suggesting trains can or should replace planes completely. Obviously for longer distances planes enable faster overall transit time than trains, even with the steps in the airport moving at a crawl. But for travel between nearby cities, we really should recognize that trains could be the miracle we’re looking for. I’m aware there are reasons that this hasn’t happened already, and its a lot easier said than done. But this is just a blog post about why we should do it, not how.

Himeiji castle

On August 28th I woke and checked out of my hotel in Kyoto. I would be sleeping in Tokyo that night, but until then I wanted to use my unlimited rail pass to quickly visit the cities Himeji and Nagoya and see their castles. First up was Himeji, which was west of Kyoto. This was the farthest west I traveled during my trip. Even with gloomy weather the castle looked awesome. To imagine the people who have looked at its imposing structure over a history spanning hundreds of years was humbling.

Nagoya castle

After Himeji, my next stop was Nagoya. Unlike Himeji Castle, Nagoya Castle is a modern recreation of the castle, which was destroyed during World War 2. It was still very cool. After exploring the castle I walked around Nagoya a bit and got dinner at a small restaurant.

Ginza

I then took the train to Tokyo, where I would stay until my trip back to LA. I was staying in the historic and very posh neighborhood of Ginza. I wandered aimlessly in the rain, looking at the lights. I then got dinner at Lawson’s, since I was increasingly aware of my vacation approaching the limits of its budget.

Tokyo Edo Museum

After waking up I planned my day. I would be leaving for the airport the next morning. It was my last real day of sightseeing and I wanted to make it count. I wanted to visit the Tokyo Edo Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, plus the shopping areas of Asakusa and Ueno in the hopes of getting the remaining souvenirs on my list. First stop was the Tokyo Edo Museum, which chronicles the history of the city of Tokyo. At the beginning of the Edo period (1600), Tokugawa Ieyasu made his capital Edo, rather than Kyoto, the capital that had served as the seat of the imperial family’s power. After the end of the Edo period, the Meiji restoration, the new government chose to keep the capital in its location, but to rename it Tokyo.

Tokyo National Museum

The museum was about to close in 30 minutes when I arrived so I had to make it count. I chose to check out the permanent collection of artifacts representing a huge span of time in Japanese history.